Daily Times

Aside from rekindling the debate regarding Islam as being inherently more violent than other religions, the Paris attacks have also sparked once again an argument within the Muslim community about how they should respond to such atrocities: whether they should sympathise with the victims all the way without any ifs and buts or just consider it a necessary evil to seize higher objectives, a violent reaction to the series of systematic oppression, opportunism and greed unleashed upon the followers of Islam by the west over the last few decades.

First, let me say that no sane person supports terrorism, at least not overtly, as it can backfire and may even cause legal trouble. However, many Muslims — educated, moderate and pragmatic — find ample reasons to condone it. And while they are doing so, one just wonders at the faint smile that spreads across their faces, an exuberant glow betraying their words of compassion as if they are indeed rejoicing instead of being concerned. On the other end of the spectrum, there exist people who find it inhuman — what to talk about religious or not — to justify the mass killings of vulnerable civilians in any shape or form, the ones who grieve the loss of American soldiers in Iraq as much as they would if one of their own family members had died.

Both of them accuse each other of being hypocritical and selfish, and both find the other to be responsible for the failure of the ummah (Muslim community) in paddling out of the quagmire of poverty, illiteracy and foreign subjugation. Blaming the self-appointed defenders of Islam for religious bigotry, the pro-west group criticises them for justifying violence in the name of God, a great sin, and reasserts itself by promoting universal human values. “Why do you have to dig in the past every time and look centuries behind in order to look forward?” they question. The defenders of faith strike back and call the latter traitors, people who have lost faith and have either given up on Islam as the way of life or sold their conscience for money, the blue passport, safe future of their children or, maybe, for all of them.

It does not take more than a few minutes to reckon that the two groups cannot reconcile their differences. It is like a debate over a glass of water, which some of them thinks is half empty while others believe it is half full. Do you know which side you belong to? Are you among those who blame the US for an attack on its soil in which thousands of people died? Or do you feel obliged to defend those who share your faith even when they do something as catastrophic as 11/13 in Paris? Or do you stand on the side of the US even when someone recites the same verses of the Quran you hold so dear to your hearts, and sacrifices his life to (allegedly) revive the glory of Islam? I do not think staying neutral is left as an option anymore.

Not too long ago, Pakistanis struggled with the same dilemma. Thousands of civilians died in suicide attacks from 2007 to 2014. Terror caste by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ruled the country as if the government did not exist. Soldiers were martyred, their lives taken in the name of Islam by the people who shared the same faith. However, the nation stood irresolute, divided into the same two groups, not sure whether they should negotiate with the TTP, accept their demands and provide them the political space that they were demanding or quash them with full force, eradicating every form of religious extremism.

People in favour of the military operation were called the “scum of the earth” by the pro-negotiation group, which, in an attempt to find justification — like we notice after the current incident — thought the insurgency could be explained away with drone attacks that killed children, women and the elderly, or the US invasion of Afghanistan, which fuelled anger and frustration. They said it would end once the US left Kabul and Pakistan stopped tailing US foreign policy. At the core of terrorism lies bad governance, poverty and oppression, according to one of their arguments. Not military action, rather good governance, is what we need to wipe out militancy. I must confess that most Pakistanis were lured in by those arguments. Their claims hit the right nerve. It helped Pakistanis exonerate themselves from taking any blame and held foreign powers responsible for everything bad happening in the region. At that time, Pakistanis also used to whisper that the real reason behind the US getting into Afghanistan did not have anything to do with 9/11 and everything to do with the country’s natural resources, which the ‘imperial power’ was so eager to tap.

But, how did it all end? Did negotiations succeed? The federal government, led by the PML-N, initiated the process twice even when the Pakistan army opposed it. Did it stop the TTP from attacking the church in Peshawar? Did the Peshawar massacre never happen?

After the Army Public School attack, everyone realised they could never negotiate with savages and that the only way to deal with extremism was to crush it with an overwhelming force, a force not only to get hold of ‘ground soldiers’ but also to track down the financiers, the abettors, the sympathisers and, above all, the source of their inspiration. This is what the west needs to do as well, which it has not done so far. It needs to go after the place it all starts from without which even when it stamps out the likes of Islamic State (IS), it will remerge in some other form like Daesh sprang out after al Qaeda.

The writer is a US-based freelance columnist. He tweets at @KaamranHashmi and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com